The Secret Time Travel Meeting is hosted – at Te Auaha’s Gallery – by Shawn Wickens, a New York-based comedian and author known for his laid-back wit and an avant-garde blend of stand-up comedy and speculative science. The theme of the night is Existential Optimism which, embarrassingly, I’ve had to google: “that life can be meaningful even when faced with challenges”.

The theme song for the opening few minutes is Rocky’s 1976; ‘Gonna Fly Now’, which I think is a whimsical tribute to Star Trek’s ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’. In fact it refers to the year Wikens was born, when his parents nicknamed him Rocky. Obviously my future self forgot to mention it.

The show’s origins trace back to Wickens’ whimsical purchase of the domain TimeMachineBlueprints.com, where you can be immersed in an AI-led meditation as well as a cryptic, near-empty set of schematics. This discovery ignited his creative curiosity, inspiring a performance that merges sharp humour with playful explorations of the Mandela effect, coincidence and other theoretical physics.

Wickens’ act takes audiences on a carefree journey through irrational yet cleverly constructed hypotheses about time travel: “What truth is there that time travel exists?” Balancing laugh-out-loud jokes with nods to real or imagined scientific concepts, the show invites viewers to consider the tantalizing idea that traversing time might not be purely illusory. By framing multipart theories – like relativistic time dilation or Einstein’s general theory of relativity – through a comedic lens, Wickens leaves the crowd both entertained and oddly swayed to the possibility that future breakthroughs could one day make time travel feasible. In fact he’s already got his second edition sequel of his book – Time Machine Blueprints II – on the rack at a future date.

However, as each show is different, from his nerdy appearance and loud Hawaiian shirt with grey matching hair and beard to what the future version of himself could possibly be where no one as yet cracked the code for moving to, the show highlights intriguing scientific perspectives.

As Wickens amusingly notes, some physics models permit forward time travel under extreme conditions (like approaching light speed), though useful execution remains light-years away. Conversely, backward travel is dismissed as a logistical nightmare, tangled in paradoxes whereby meddling in the past would undo one’s own existence.

Ultimately, Secret Time Travel Meeting doesn’t claim to hold answers. Instead, it revels in the juncture of comedy and cosmic wonder, inspiring audiences to laugh at the absurdity while pondering the ‘what ifs’. Wickens’ genius lies in transforming abstruse physics into relevant humour, proving that even the wildest ideas can spark both giggles and genuine curiosity.

The result? A show that’s as intellectually stimulating as it is hilariously unpredictable. Did I mention the Mandela effect?

Perhaps now is prudent to leave you with the joke of the night.

Knock knock
Who’s there?
Time
Time who?
I’ll tell you….!

Watch the show….

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