When Howard Meyer and a group of actors and writers tried to start Axial Theatre in 1998, the mix wasn’t right.

“Terrific actors, but a few too many egos,” he says.
Meyer, a baseball fan,  finds parallels on the diamond.
“It’s the difference between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees. You can buy all the best players in baseball, but that still doesn’t win you a World Series,” he says.
A year later, the group had changed, the egos were gone and Axial was born.
To an outsider, Axial’s approach is collaborative in the extreme. When the stage manager for the group’s current show — “Inside/Out,” four one-acts — started planning set changes, she found every actor ready to do his or her part. Read a review of “Inside/Out” here.

“She was blown away by that,” Meyer says. “I think that’s a small  example of how everybody feels happy to be part of this family.”
For 10 years, this “family” has been committed to collaborating to develop new plays over an extended process of improvisation. The scripts are written by company members and then honed by the entire 15-member company.
It’s a longer process than most professional companies, where established plays are mounted in two weeks, but it’s a model used successfully by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the creators of last year’s Tony-winning drama, “August: Osage County.”
Meyer’s not in a hurry.
“I grew up in an era of impatience,” he says. “We all did — ‘Get it fast, get it done’ — and it’s impossible not to get sucked into that for a period of time, but I grew weary of things being rushed to the stage.”
There’s no rush at Axial.
“My experience has taught me how much deeper you can go and how much more you can enjoy the experience if you live with it for a long time.”
The audience is part of the collaboration: Axial uses audience talkbacks to help shape its pieces.
And the audience provides inspiration, with playwrights writing with a metropolitan suburban family in mind.
“Inside/Out” has short takes on parenthood, relationships and how people view themselves.
“I’d like to think that the issues we’re choosing are issues that are weighing upon us all, that people are dealing with everywhere,” Meyer says.
Meyer says he’s seen already the impact of the financial crisis  on that audience. The turnout at this year’s fund-raising gala was down about 40 percent from last year. Still, those who attended helped to raise 80 percent of what was raised last year.
“The vibe was so warm,” Meyer says. “The people who know us value what we’re doing because they feel included and invited into the process.”
Meyer hopes that in another 10 years, the group’s connections will be broader.
“It’d be nice to keep growing and become a regional theater that gets some respect beyond our borders,” he says. “We live in Westchester. Westchester’s our home, but we’re not just a Westchester theater anymore. It’d certainly be nice, like Steppenwolf, to move a show into New York and be recognized for the work we do.”
Meyer doesn’t just talk the talk about teamwork and collaboration and giving yourself over to the material. He lives it. In the play “Junior” in “Inside/Out,” he plays a yet-to-be-born baby who forces his future father to come to grips with fatherhood. That’s Meyer on stage, walking around in a diaper.
Consider it taking one for the team.

Axial Theatre
At St. John’s Episcopal Church,
8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville
914-286-7680.
axialtheatre.org
“Inside/Out”
An evening of comedic one-acts by Brian Hugh O’Neill, James Christy, Jeanne Dorsey and Linda Giuliano.
Oct. 31 at 8; Nov. 1 at 2 and 8; Nov. 2 at 4.
$25.

Photo by Elizabeth Phelps: The cast of “Junior,” one of the plays that makes up “Inside/Out” at Axial Theatre, includes, from left: Michael Raymond Fox, Howard Meyer and Mark Gorham. “Inside/Out” marks the start of Axial’s 10th season of presenting new works in Pleasantville.