Diana Frances Clent moved from Langley to Maple Ridge, British Columbia, when she was 13, after what she later described as a "rather traumatic family shake-up".
[1] She took drama courses and initially pursued dramatic Shakespearean acting,[3] but was repeatedly cast in comedic roles and was thrilled by the audience response.
[3] In 1991, she replaced an actor in the RPS production A Twisted Christmas Carol, an improvisational play based around a framework of the Dickens classic.
[5] RPS attracted corporate clients and found steady work performing customized comedy for conferences and also offering workshops for employee relations.
[11] She directed a production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) in January 1998,[12] and staged a portion of the play as a song-and-dance number when she found that her actors could tap dance.
[15] In 2005, Frances began performing Leave it to Cleavage, an improv show she had developed with Ellie Harvie, in which their housewife characters provide 1950s-era solutions to modern problems posed by the audience.
Organizers and audiences were so impressed that Frances was booked for full improv shows the following years[25] and closed the 2007 festival with Leave it to Cleavage.
[41] and she has also written for The Directors Guild of Canada Awards (host Arisa Cox),[citation needed] and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.