Thank you for your question, unfortunately there is no simple answer. I guess different drama practitioners would answer it in different ways. The way I understand it, in drama for learning and mantle of the expert, is:

1. Role(s) is the point of view adopted by the teacher and/or the students.

2. Within a single episode there my be a number of different roles adopted for different purposes or functions.

3. Frame represents the context of the drama, that is the time, place, tension and people involved.

4. Those involved co-create the events of the drama, within the frame, representing different points of view.

For example, some work I did yesterday with my class of year 5 and 6 students. The frame was a situation in a medieval city in 1349 where the plague has recently arrived. The city councillors (one of the students' roles) have decided to order the quarantine of any person seen in the city with the signs of the plague. Using the drama convention of events told by the city chronicle, the students worked in groups representing different events happening as a consequence of the quarantine rules, each answering a different question - what happened to the dead? Were there any exceptions? Who was given the job of enforcing the quarantine? etc.

In each scene the students represented different roles (for example, people held in quarantine, soldiers, priests, family etc) and then reflected on the effects of the quarantine laws, both as city councillors (role) and themselves.

I hope that helps… However, there is a complication. Dorothy Heathcote, as well as using frame in the sense I've described above, also used frame in another way. She often referred to Goffman's use of frame. For Goffman people are constantly 'framing' the world and adopting different positions (or ways of behaving) in relation to the context. For example, I behave differently at school with children and parents than I do in the pub with my friends. I am still the same person but the context effects my language and actions.

This effect is magnified within drama because the change in language and actions caused by context can be stopped, highlighted and examined - like in a lab.

Heathcote applied Goffman's use of frame within drama, in particular the way actions and language changed the further the person is from the event in time and space. She created a model to illustrate this effect, called Frame Distance - http://www.moeplanning.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/frame-distance.pdf

In the model she gives examples of the kinds of role that might represent the points of view of people at that distance from the event - participant, observer, priest, recorder, researcher etc. And this might be were the confusion between role and frame has occurred.
Tim