Reply #2: Acton theater group to go on with show despite murder-suicide

[paineinthearse]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/02/11/acton_theater_group_to_go_on_with_show_despite_murder_suicide?mode=PF

Acton theater group to go on with show despite murder-suicide
February 11, 2005

ACTON, Mass. --The cast of a community theater production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" decided to go on with the show despite the deaths of the show's star and a supporting actor in an apparent homicide-suicide. The Open Door Theater's scheduled April 1 opening of the musical will proceed, cast members decided in a Wednesday meeting held two days after Stephen M. CampoBasso apparently fatally shot his partner, Ryan F. Curtis, then killed himself.

"The overwhelming sentiment of the cast, the production team, the board and the grief counselors that we consulted with was that the best thing to do was to continue the show, and that it is what Ryan and Stephen would've wanted," the theater's president, Glenn A. Herdeg, told the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester. Curtis, 29, was to have played the starring role of Joseph, while CampoBasso, 53, was supposed to play the part of a character called Simeon. Herdeg declined to say how the roles would be filled.

Investigators say Curtis was shot to death Monday morning in the Leominster home he shared with CampoBasso. The shooting triggered a manhunt for CampoBasso, a prominent Leominster lawyer. CampoBasso apparently turned the gun on himself, investigators said, and his body was found Monday night in the woods off Route 140 in Princeton.
Friends said the couple had been engaged to marry in the fall.