“Last year … I had the chance to re-examine a lot of memories and assumptions that had been laid down in my childhood, but which I had never consciously examined,” says South African-born writer and performer, Peter Van Der Merwe.

“Things that I thought of as fairly normal, the levels of violence I grew up with - my parents’ anxiety for their personal safety and their children’s safety that I absorbed as a child - were quite shocking and disturbing to other people. That’s when I realised it would make an interesting story.”

The resulting one-man play, In the Arms of a Lion, is a fictionalised account of coming out as a gay teenager in the apartheid era, and premieres at The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival this week.

Set amidst the chaos of a social and political culture that is violently imploding, it sees Van Der Merwe playing a range of characters, from a white supremacist preacher and a woman panicking about her children’s welfare, to a fictionalised version of his younger self.

“What happens in my story is that this child grows up in a very racially-charged environment, this Christian fundamentalist environment; and as an adult, when he comes out to his parents, they realise that all of their bigotry - their attempts to keep him safe as a child with a Christian education and ‘keeping the race pure’ - has actually completely oppressed him on the basis of his sexuality.”

But rather than being just about sexuality, Van Der Merwe says, he wanted the play to be more universal in its themes.

“The crossover point of discrimination on the basis of race and discrimination on the basis of sexuality is not often explored, so that’s what I wanted to do with my story … It’s not only a white perspective on the damage done by apartheid, but also the damage done by white people to each other internally, as the cost of upholding that system of keeping the ‘other’ out.”

In the Arms of a Lion at Northcote Town Hall, September 24 – October 4, as part of The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival. Bookings: www.melbournefringe.com.au or (03) 9660 9666.

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