ocr drama gcse- devising process

so, i completed my last mock for my drama devising and on the performance i got a 0/20 along with the rest of my group because we were 17 seconds off the timing. for reference we needed to be between 9.01 - 10.59 minutes and we were 8. 54.
however, there's a little bit of backstory- i had made most of the script and in our final rehearsal we were at 15.43 minutes so i suggested that since i knew the script best i would cut it down and we would do a last minute runthrough the break before our performance- during that break we times at 12.47. We knew we would get failed at that time and it was 5 minutes till the performance so we said we wouldn't go at a faster pace, rather mparaphrase any of the lengthier speeches.
and we ended up under time.

long story short- is there anything you would recommend for me to do in the actual thing to help reach that time?

if it helps, i'm usually the most hands on and take it upon myself to schedule additional rehearsals and plan our lessons so we can try to be as productive as possible but sometimes i feel like activities such as hot-seating just aren't a good use of time ?