An Iranian actor who spent almost two years in an asylum-seekers’ detention camp where he fell in love with one of the guards is telling his story in a new play that could embarrass the Australian government over its tough immigration policies.

"Through The Wire" traces the ordeal and romance of Shahin Shafaei, a 30-year-old actor and playwright, who fled Iran after the Ministry of Culture banned his work.

Shafaei plays himself in the drama, which is running at the Sydney Opera House, before beginning a national tour next year.

The play’s writer and director, Ros Horin, hopes "Through The Wire" might even tour in Asia, where the publicity could expose the Australian government to more criticism of its policy of detaining — sometimes for years — people seeking asylum.

In mid-2000, with Iranian authorities threatening to jail him, Shafaei paid a people-smuggler 4,000 US dollars for what he hoped would be a passage to Germany. Instead, he ended up on a rusty and crowded boat in the seas off northern Australia.

When Australian border guards intercepted the vessel in June, they sent the passengers, who did not have proper immigration papers, to the Curtin detention centre in the remote desert of Western Australia.

It was there that Shafaei met Gabrielle Schultz, a camp guard. "I could see a sadness in her eyes about her work," said Shafaei.

With the perfect English he had acquired as a student of literature and religion, Shafaei became a leader of the detainees at Curtin.

When Schultz returned to Curtin after a seven-month break — this time as a counsellor, not a guard — she and Shafaei began an intense friendship that eventually flowered into a romance.

"Our first conversations were about God and creation and different world religions," said Shafaei, a non-practising Muslim who had read not only the Koran, but also the Bible and Torah, the holy books of Christians and Jews.

"We began talking every day and, when she was not around, my friends could see how sad I was."

But the pair had to keep their romance secret. "What could I have done?" he asked. "Kiss her in front of everyone? It was not possible."

Soon after Shafaei was released in February 2002, having spent 22 months behind a razor-wire fence, Schultz resigned her job and the couple moved in together.

"The love is there," he said. "We do not need marriage to prove it."

But there is also the complicating fact that Shahaei is living in Australia on a three-year temporary protection visa which expires next February.

"Before we decide about marriage, I would prefer to see what my future is," he said. "I do not want to use marriage for this issue."

Through a network of refugee advocates, Shafaei also met writer and director Horin, a prominent arts administrator and human rights activist in Sydney.

"I’m Jewish and I felt the Australian people could not turn a blind eye towards this issue (of detaining asylum-seekers) but I wanted a new way to tell the story," said Horin, who convinced Shafaei to return to the stage.

Shafaei insists "Through The Wire" is not a polemic against the Australian government’s policies but believes that a play will speak with more power about the plight of refugees than any newspaper story.