An Ames resident stars in a new play that opened this month at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines’ Stoner Studio Theater.

“Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With the Illuminati),” is a two-man play that features veteran ACTOR’s star Marty Ellenberger playing the lead role, Reverend Eddie.

Playwrights Levi “Eddie” Lee and Larry Larson said the play is a post-apocalyptic farce set well in the future in an old, burned out church. The plot carries the audience through a search for faith and spirituality through Reverend Eddie’s slow descent into madness.

The two actors play a total of eight characters through the course of the play. These characters are mostly figments of Reverend Eddie’s paranoid imagination.

Reverend Eddie also has several “revelations” made to him, Lee said. One of the more comical of these is found in a country and western song, “Jesus was a Lutheran.”

Ellenberger’s previous productions includes the recent “Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead.”

The character of Reverend Eddie is one of a disillusioned and spiritually burned out minister who slowly goes insane through the course of the play.

He is accompanied by a hunchbacked sidekick, Brother Lawrence (played by Indianola’s Dan May), who provides comic relief to the “paranoiac, demented ramblings” of Reverend Eddie.

Lee and Larson admit that their play is somewhat autobiographical, and Lee said a few words to sum up the play.

“The way most people view religion is that rigidity is what is truly spiritual and felicity is heresy,” Lee said. “This is not always the case. Sometimes, what is simple is what is right.”

“Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With the Illuminati),” plays tonight, Friday and Saturday at the Stoner Studio Theater in Des Moines at 8, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday.

Tickets are $12 at the door.