Dress rehearsals;

In our first dress rehearsal, I found it a lot better to get into my character, Doll, because I could then begin to think of ways I could hold my body, for example;
I could hunch over a little bit and hold my rag up so it didn't keep tripping me up.
Also wearing the long skirt restricted ways I could hold my back, because of the pins at the back, so when I was hunched over I could only do it with the top half of my back and my shoulders.

Our first dress rehearsal didn't go so well, because people were not focussed and listening out for audience cues etc.
We were all talking backstage, instead of properly preparing ourselves to get onto stage as if it was the actual show. I think people were not paying that much attention in the first dress rehearsal because it wasn't the actual show, however, after the first run though Andy told us to get our acts together and the second run through went a lot better.

Before our second dress rehearsal, Andy gave us notes on how to improve, apart from shutting up backstage, one of the notes he gave me was emphasise the line "Acts at a push" because I was losing the line. I didn't really understand why I was saying it, up until that moment, Dolls just mocking Otway's play and agreeing with Mrs Betterton's opinion; the plays too long!
So in our run through right after that, I put more emphasise on the line and it made it a lot funnier and it gave Mrs Farley and Nell something to laugh at because Doll was being rude.

Our second dress rehearsal made massive improvements, I think. Because everyone stayed quiet and they were listening out for their cues to come and stand at the sides to be the audience.
Also everyone was a lot more prepared for it, the first group on stage were a lot more confident with their lines and "it felt so much better performing with everyone quiet backstage"- Liam.

I feel like the dress rehearsals are so much better than normal rehearsals, because everyone feels more like their character, and they stop feeling like a teenage girl/boy.