I was bombed on 7/7 – is that art?

Molly Naylor has written a show about it; here she ponders the role of truth

(TONY BUCKINGHAM)

On 7 July in 2005 I boarded a Circle Line train at Liverpool Street and was involved in a life-altering event that has since become public property. Five years later, I wrote and now perform the autobiographical show Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You.

Truth really is stranger than fiction, but it isn't structured, it doesn't have acts, it doesn't have an arc. It's shambolic. So what's going on in a piece of theatre presented as reality or the truth?

I could have fictionalised my show, but I decided I wanted to write it as it happened – more mundane, as it turned out, than anything that the imagination might dream up. My show is a scripted, one-woman (me – Hi!) storytelling and poetry show. It's very stripped down, me talking to the audience with some visuals (made by my brother, the artist Max Naylor). The show is in some ways about the 7/7 bombings, but it's also about growing up. It just so happened that while I was learning to be less idiotic, less feckless, I was on one of the 7/7 trains on the London Underground.

I've seen a couple of other autobiographical shows lately, and found myself discussing them with a German woman and an English man. I say discussing; actually I was listening, which isn't like me. I like to get involved, particularly when there's opportunity for a little cross-cultural badinage.

In Daniel Kitson's comic monologue 66a Church Road – A Lament Made of Memories and Kept in Suitcases, which I saw when it toured the United Kingdom last year, a man (Kitson) sits on a chair and talks about his flat. In Tim Clare's Death Drive (staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer), a man (Clare) discusses his quarter-life-crisis-inspired breakdown. As my friend's four-year-old would say: big whoop. So why do I remember both of these pieces as stirring, funny and important?

The conversation I was eavesdropping on turned to discussing the shows' emotional content. The woman was saying, "Why the hell should I care just because it's real?" The man's view was: "Well, I care, because it's all true." I wasn't sure whose side to be on.

Some people have tried to engage me in a debate about whether my show is theatre or not. This doesn't interest me. It's just a show. I actually think calling something theatre has the potential to put some people off. I suppose my show differs from most theatre in that it elicits a present-tense reaction. I aim for response. So maybe it's closer to a stand-up show, without as many laughs. I want an immediate emotional comeback.

Unlike these other autobiographical shows, though, mine hinges on a very public, tragic event, an event that everyone now knows quite a lot about, at least in a factual way. I wanted to approach it in a personal way to avoid making assumptions about how other people – particularly other passengers – experienced this event. Poetry and storytelling are very direct and intimate ways to communicate, I think, so it seemed a good place to start.

People assume that setting those experiences down on paper was cathartic. In fact it was important to me that it wasn't. I didn't want the show to appear therapeutic. I feel very strongly that art shouldn't be about the artist getting over something. You get over it first, and then present your story, whatever that is. That's why I waited five years before I sat down to write my show. It took all that time before I was ready. By then I was also five years older and a better writer. I was only 21 when the bomb went off.

Of course it was tough sitting down to a blank screen and dredging up the memories all over again. But more uncomfortable was having to examine my 21-year-old carefree, careless self, the self that didn't survive the experience, the self that emerged different, more thoughtful, changed.

People often wonder what the writing process did to my awareness of my own good fortune, as opposed to so many others. Had it made me dwell on what it was like for them? Had I talked to them about their experiences?

I was one of the lucky ones in that I was rescued by one of the London Underground workers (I never found out his name) and emerged relatively unscathed. I didn't make contact after the event with any of my fellow passengers to exchange experiences because I didn't have the opportunity. I didn't know who they were.

The problem with work presented as personal is that the audience will always view it differently, their bullshit receptors on red alert. And consequently, an autobiographical performance risks being written off with just one wrong step. I didn't want my show to be a dark piece, or come over like a documentary. I wanted it to be a coming-of-age story with a bittersweet tone, optimistic, hopeful. I even allowed for some moments of humour.

If the performer is at all disingenuous then the "reality" becomes invalid, which is worse, much worse, than something she or he made up. Surely the ultimate deception is bullshit disguised as truth? This is maybe why many people distrust politicians.

In order to not be disingenuous you have to present the whole truth. In my show, for the entire first act the "me" character is an absolute idiot, not someone I am proud to have been. I could have lied or cut the negatives from the show, but I felt I had to be honest across the board, not selective with my truth.

There's an inevitable tension between presenting the truth and creating a narrative arc. I'm a scriptwriter as well as a ... producer of whatever this is (actor? public diarist? neither really) so the temptation to mould the piece around a three-act structure was, well, tempting. But I had to be bold. I chose a point to end it, but it's more of a cut-off than a completion.

This makes it hard when people review your work – are they reviewing an hour or so of theatre, or are they reviewing my life? Real life doesn't have neat segments and endings. But this segment of a life has to work as a show, because I'm asking people to watch it.

People who've seen my show often respond to its veracity only in retrospect. I get lots of nice and thoughtful emails, but at the time members of the audience seem reluctant to talk to me. I know that feeling. You're not sure what you've just watched, it's almost a little embarrassing – you've sort of seen someone without any clothes on. Better to go home and send a message, to save the indignity of talking to me while I'm naked.

After seeing 66a Church Road I then saw Kitson's next show, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church, which mainly isn't about him. And I liked it just as much, because it was funny, astute and observational. So maybe the German woman and the English man were both right. It doesn't have to be real to be good art, it just has to have truth.

'Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You' is at BAC, London, 26-28 May, and touring (mollynaylor.com). The author is currently preparing a version for broadcast in July on Radio 4.