Role playing vs. drama

I like the idea of calling this week's work "role playing" rather than "drama."

By role playing, we begin to understand the thoughts of the character.  We are given a better contextualization of the emotional side of the story that is often hard to pull out of plain text.  Pirie uses the example of students understanding what it felt like to be Macbeth and go through the things he went through. Making this personal connection to the characters gives definite value to the students.

I'll be honest, I'm still a little skeptical about how to implement drama in the classroom without it being superficial and "only enacting what students already know."  Even if the students are able to role play and see the emotions and thought process of the characters, how can we make sure that each student gets a chance at this?  It's not like we can act out the same scene 10 or 15 times.  The option I think of is a group discussion.  I'm just not totally convince that there isn't a better way to meet the goals.