carpark clubbing

A NEW WEB SERIES SET IN A WESTERN SYDNEY PARKING LOT.

When one young woman gets ditched by her problematic friends, and another is pretending to be at the library studying, and yet another is kicked out of her driving instructor’s car, there’s nothing to do but band together. To find friends in a hopeless place: a doughnut shop car park in Western Sydney.

So begins Carpark Clubbing, a charming and clever four-part web series written and acted by Tasnim Hossain, Monica Kumar and Sophea Op, who met through the world of local theatre. The show was brought to life with help from the Digital First Comedy Initiative, and follows three young women – Nashrah, Bonita and Sokhey – as they help each other navigate young adulthood, all while dancing and scoffing discarded baked goods in the car.

“I’m from Liverpool and there’s nowhere to go out, because every single club gets shut down by the cops,” Monica says. “But there is a Krispy Kreme with a giant car park, and at nighttime, it looks like a hip hop movie. Kids dress up, play music out of their cars and buy doughnuts. That’s where the story came from – it’s about accessibility and finding a safe space when you aren’t given one.” Sophea agrees: “We've all had similar experiences of hanging out with mates in cars, because you just want to be a teenager and have stupid conversations about dating and all the rest of it, but there’s nowhere to hang out that’s safe. If you have your Ps, you have freedom.”

Tasnim, Monica and Sophea’s backgrounds are Bangladeshi Muslim, Fijian-indian and Cambodian respectively, and all but Tasnim (who’s a Canberran) grew up in Western Sydney. Carpark Clubbing is their way of reaching out to young women like them. “We get to see goofy stoner white dudes doing these things, so it’s fun to be able to see women of colour doing it, as well,” Tasnim says. “People don’t expect to see Muslim women with agency, or women smoking pot in their cars. We wanted our characters to have choice in their lives.”

Though the show isn’t autobiographical, there are elements of the writers’ stories woven in. “Nearly all of it is a fictionalised version of something that has happened to one of us,” Monica says. “But we’re much nerdier than our characters – we weren't smoking weed at uni in cars two streets away from our parents!” Storylines from the eight-minute episodes explore themes such as dating, class divides, consent and anxiety, often in subtle and comical ways.

During the writing process, the trio looked to their favourite shows for inspiration – Chewing Gum, Broad City, Insecure, Brooklyn Nine-nine – but wanted to make something unique. “It was hard to find references, because there’s a lack of those stories – not just for people of colour, but specifically for women,” Tasnim says. “We were in the process of working out what our own voices are.”

With an infectious energy that’s both hilarious and sincere, the series – screening now on ABC iview – has resonated with viewers from Western Sydney and beyond. “I’ve been inboxed by so many teenagers just saying, ‘Holy crap, I do that,’” Sophea says. “A friend posted about it on Facebook, saying it’s amazing to see a Muslim woman in a hijab play a love interest and be desired and pursued,” Tasnim adds. “And another friend of Indigenous heritage from rural New South Wales watched it with his mum and his aunt and they all laughed. He’s not from Western Sydney, he’s not a woman of colour, but there was something about the shit-talking nature of it.”

At its heart, Carpark Clubbing is about the power of friendship. “These three girls hanging out in a car park – they’re all looking for something different, and they’re finding what they need from each other,” Sophea says. “It’s a sweet little hug to how we grew up as teens, finding our mates in the most random spots.”