Speech/action incongruity

Last December I wrote about a problematic scene in The Spirit--the part where a young Denny Colt and Sand Seref are accosted by reporters. The problem is that even though Denny tells the reporters to get away he stands there waiting to be accosted. There is no emotional reality to the scene because the speech and action are incongruous.

This past year I saw two student projects that had the exact same problem. There was dramatic dialogue--people arguing and being accosted, yet the actors just sat there like puppets. I think this is another aspect of the performer-objectification problem. The performer becomes an object whose purpose exists to serve up dialogue, a puppet to be manipulated by the artist-director. The character works outside-in vs inside out and has no life of its own.