“Often, I hear people say Las Vegas is the Wild West, and it really is,” Troy Heard says. “There are no hard and fast rules on how to do anything here, other than to do it consistently and to do it with quality.”

Heard has been doing just that as producing director of Onyx Theatre. In recent years he’s staged productions ranging from original works (Jonestown) to pop culture pastiche (Reservoir Dolls). He planned a 2016-17 season much in that vein—a “villains”-themed season that included the Tony-award nominated play Hand to God (about a demonic hand puppet) and Carrie: The Musical.

Then, Heard says, Onyx owner Randy Lange unexpectedly changed direction, and like many an actor before him, Heard improvised. The result is Majestic Repertory Theatre, a new company comprised of the board of directors Heard assembled for Onyx, with himself as executive and artistic director. The company’s first pop-up show, Little Shop of Horrors, opens October 6 at Alios Gallery in the Arts District—the neighborhood, Heard says, Majestic hopes to make a permanent home, where “artists can come work and grow together, and we can engage the community in a dialogue.”

Alongside this “getting-on-our-feet season,” Majestic’s next few steps are securing nonprofit status for the company, finding a permanent space and a “massive” round of fundraising. The rest of its premiere season, which also features The Bad Seed and Heard’s own Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard of the Living Dead, will also be staged in Arts District venues, and Heard sounds especially excited for Little Shop, an “environmental” production created with stage lighting experts Todd+Bryan. “You’ll actually be in Mushnik’s flower shop,” Heard says.

Mostly, Heard is wound up about the sheer possibilities a new Las Vegas theater company can offer. To Heard, this is the west at its wildest. “There are so many equity actors that came [to Vegas] whose shows closed. You can get them in a show, engage the right writers, create something new and then take it elsewhere,” Heard says. “It’s what you should do as an artist—to reflect the community in which you’re standing.”