Is it possible to have a character talking in the background of a room and also have their talking animation going?
I think you need to animation the characters yourself in that case, just check out the character animating functions like SetCharacterView(), AnimateCharacter(), etc.
Also check out http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=11868. But if you just need it only once in a certain place then using AnimateCharacter(), as Gilbert suggested, seems more reasonable and easy way to go.