Casey McDermott

Casey McDermott was an Off-Broadway company and general manager whose work kept adventurous New York theatre companies running day to day. At the time of her death she was managing producer of The New Group, the Off-Broadway company founded by Scott Elliott in 1995 and known for intimate, contemporary plays and revivals. She had joined The New Group in 2023 as general manager and was promoted to managing producer about two months before she died.

Playbill and colleagues described a skilled company manager known for compassion, professionalism, and an elegant sense of style. Before New York she was a founding member of The Laboratory Theatre Project, worked as a group and corporate sales manager for Broadway Across America in Portland and for Portland Opera, and served as associate general manager at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. In New York she was a company manager at Maximum Entertainment Productions, served as a company manager on and Juliet on Broadway, and was company manager for the Off-Broadway hit Titanique.

She also served on the board of the Off-Broadway League, the trade association for Off-Broadway producers, theatres, and general managers. That board service placed her among peers who shape the business side of the city's smaller stages, advocacy that rarely draws public attention but that colleagues treat as essential to keeping nonprofit theatre viable.

McDermott died suddenly on 18 September 2026. The Off-Broadway League shared the news on social media, and Playbill reported her death on 22 September in an article by Margaret Hall. No cause of death has been made public. She is survived by her husband, Kevin Carroll. Because the loss was unexpected, members of the Off-Broadway community organised support for Carroll, including a GoFundMe appeal noted in contemporary reporting.

Her career was spent largely backstage: budgeting, scheduling, contracts, and the logistics that let artists take the stage. Theatre people widely regard that work as the quiet architecture of a season. McDermott's path from Portland and Los Angeles to Broadway and Off-Broadway, and finally to leadership at The New Group, left a record of companies and colleagues who trusted her to keep the show going. This memorial remembers that stewardship of Off-Broadway craft rather than any single opening night.