The SteelStacks Improv Comedy Festival, for the first time, will send in the clowns when the event returns Friday to the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks, Founders Way, Bethlehem.

Chad Damiani, a modern/theatrical clown performer, will headline opening night of the two-day festival, held in the Fowler Blast Furnace Room.

“Stand Up and Clown,” named after the actor’s monthly Los Angeles show, marks the festival’s first clown improv.

Damiani, starring in TBS’ reboot of reality hoax comedy “Joe Schmo,” combines clown principles — minus white faces or big shoes — with elements of character, stand-up and improvisation.

“Stand Up and Clown” finds Damiani’s Clown Boss directing non-clown performers through their first clown show. The show’s name, he said, came from how most of the casts in Los Angeles “were made up of well-known stand-up comics used to being in control.”

The SteelStacks show, Damiani said, will feature improvisers from Bethlehem and visiting improvisers, making up a cast of eight players — “all people I’ve never played with before.”

Improvised Jane Austen, a Chicago-based ensemble, will headline Saturday. The group, performing since 2008, uses Austen’s tropes, themes and language to create an unscripted romantic comedy set in Regency-era England, told with a modern perspective.

The 12th annual festival also features three-dozen or so teams — 19 new to the event — from the Lehigh Valley, New York City and beyond.

The Del Close Marathon, named after the late improv pioneer, inspired the marathon-style SteelStacks festival.

“Once we open doors, we keep on going,” said Addyson Young, ArtsQuest programming specialist and director of the improv festival. “Team after team does 15-to-20-minute sets until we reach the end of the night.”

A whole lot of laughs

Festival headliners, meanwhile, will perform hourlong sets and lead daytime workshops. Scranton-born Damiani, raised in Atco, New Jersey, has spent a decade-plus as a leader and architect of Los Angeles’ modern clown scene.

Clown, he said, “works to subvert expectations, break the rules and create moments of danger, triumph and catastrophic failure you’d never see in a traditional improv set.”

Furthermore, he added, “clown is about celebrating what makes you imperfect. You have to be authentic, even when you’re playing ridiculous characters.”

Damiani thinks the over-the-top quality of regional pro wrestling and dubbed martial arts movies, which he watched growing up with his dad, gave him his first taste of clown.

“Performers trying their best and often failing, but the failures made it more fun,” Damiani said, adding that, in 1997, he got a job as an announcer for World Championship Wrestling.

“It was the best clown training. My job was to treat this ridiculous soap opera like it was Shakespeare. I still play with that element, taking foolishness seriously in my current work.”

A Blacklist-winning screenwriter, Damiani started doing improv in Los Angeles in his 30s.

After becoming a widower, though, he turned to clown, as “I became more interested in making deeper connections with an audience and taking bigger risks.”

Damiani’s other projects include a podcast, clown variety show “Stamptown” and “Clown Zoo,” an outdoor theatrical mask show he co-created during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back in 2020, Damiani appeared on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.”

He aimed, and succeeded, in giving the crowd someone to boo and jeer during his audition.

True clowns, he said, can’t lose, as “failures make the audience love you even more.”

Period pieces

As for Improvised Jane Austen, the group will give the SteelStacks audience a story in the style of an Austen novel, based on audience suggestions. “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma” rank among the English author’s six early-1800s novels.

“We ask for a letter of the alphabet from the audience and two words that begin with that letter,” said performer Jessye Grace Mueller, also co-producer for Improvised Jane Austen. “Those two words are the title for that night’s show, and inspire our improvisation.”

Before joining Improvised Jane Austen in September 2013, Mueller performed and taught improv, and already loved Austen’s body of work.

“She was such a great craftsperson when it came to character-based comedy and social satire,” Mueller said. “She essentially invented the romantic comedy genre.”

Audiences need not know much about Austen’s work to enjoy the show.

“I’d love people who see the show to get curious about Jane Austen’s novels,” Mueller said. “We want our audience to laugh along with us, find some joy and witness a love story.”

Damiani, meanwhile, wants the memorable moments to keep coming.

“Last year, I got to do a 75-minute improvised clown show with my friend Rory Scovel and Will Ferrell.

“That’s what I’m still chasing — amazing moments on stage, where I give the audience an unforgettable experience.”