Role-playing is a well regarded learning activity. By participating in this activity, students can apply their knowledge through their assigned roles in a realistic but risk-free situation. The role play stimulates class discussion, dramatizes rhetorical principles about purpose, shows how to adapt a text to an audience of employees in a nonacademic setting, and allows students to reflect on their own work experience and its impact on their behavior after the role play. Students build on the knowledge of management types that they gained in courses or in their own work experience, especially the distinction between Theory X and Theory Y managers as described by Douglas McGregor and Theory Z, inspired by Ouchi. The role play does not require rehearsal and uses only short scripts that are provided to the cast at the beginning of class. It also involves many students who both act out assigned parts and engage in spirited discussion. A role-playing situation the author uses to teach revising strategies in business and technical writing classes helps to motivate and involve her students, who typically have considerable work experience. This article describes the role play, which concerns draft and revised versions of a memo about a fatal plane crash sent by a communications manager to her employees.