While she was still a student at San Francisco State University, Leslie deGiere took a break from lectures and went to London. "I had lived in America my entire life, and wanted to go somewhere else," she said. "I was interested in British history and literature, and decided to spend some time in London. I had a wonderful experience there, that broadened my horizons." To keep going, she found herself a job in a pub. That was the well-known Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath, an old hostelry that comes in for mention by Charles Dickens, "and that has its own ghost and everything," Leslie, eager and enthusiastic, said.
She returned to San Francisco to complete her degree. "I studied directing and acting," she said. "I did more dance than anything else, and had a very difficult time deciding exactly what to do, something I loved doing and that I could still do later on." Having settled on a career in work for the theater, after graduation she joined theater groups throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
"As well as scripted work, I directed an improvisational theater group, she reported. "In that kind of theater, you get suggestions from the audience, make up a story, make up a song, that kind of thing. People say you have to go out on stage expecting to fail, then you'll not be disappointing yourself. I've done a bit of improvisation here too with the Tokyo Comedy Store. The majority of my theater work in San Francisco was in acting and a bit of teaching, primarily voice. When an actor or a singer gets really tense, the voice constricts. That's hurtful to the person, and sounds awful. The voice technique I work with is about relaxing all that." She was also associated with the California Shakespeare Festival and with the San Francisco Mime Group, learning as much as she gave.