Tim Robbins’ Experimental New Project : Radio: Hollywood’s hot player turns his writing, directing and performing talents to a satirical drama lampooning Columbus.

How do you follow a string of high-profile projects such as starring in the critically acclaimed film “The Player,” directing, writing and starring in another movie, “Bob Roberts,” and hosting “Saturday Night Live”?

When you’re Tim Robbins, one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, everyone’s watching your next move.

Well, the next move may come as a surprise. The 34-year-old Robbins ventures into new and unlikely territory today: writing, starring in and co-directing a satirical radio drama.

“Mayhem: The Invasion,” which explores what Robbins calls “the myth of Christopher Columbus as heroic explorer,” will have its world premiere on KCRW-FM (89.9) at 1 p.m. today, with a repeat at 7 p.m. About 30 other public-radio stations around the country will also be broadcasting the work.

The play--which was taped during performances before an audience at the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Santa Monica last Thursday and Friday--is the season opener for L.A. Theatre Works’ “The Play’s the Thing” radio drama series and stars the Actors Gang theater ensemble, a troupe of actors Robbins put together while still in film school at UCLA.

“Radio drama is a brand-new thing for me,” Robbins said in an interview before the taping. “It’s an experiment. I’m excited about it and think it should be fun. I have to think in new terms.”

He had conceived “Mayhem” as a stage play. But L.A. Theatre Works’ producing director, Susan Albert Loewenberg, who had worked with Robbins when he was freshly out of film school, heard about the project through a member of the Actors Gang and suggested that he adapt it for radio.

“I thought it was a radio piece because it’s quite verbally stunning,” Loewenberg said. “It’s a virtuoso performance with sound and words.”

Like “Bob Roberts,” which chronicles the adventures of a folksinger-business tycoon running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, “Mayhem: The Invasion” is a satire with political overtones.

It features two historians debating Columbus’ reputation within the context of a loopy television talk show called “Conflagration,” which Robbins describes as “Crossfire” melded with “Wheel of Fortune.” The winner is to receive such “points and prizes” as a “Barcalounger Captain’s Chair, Commemorative Edition” and a “Columbus/Isabella/Ferdinand Chess Set.” Meanwhile, the talk show is punctuated with interruptions providing news updates from the Persian Gulf War.

“I’m a great believer in laughter as a companion to fear, to kind of offset the darkness,” Robbins said. “Think about the great comedies and there’s always some really dark moments. But I also think good satire has to be dangerous. It has to be in people’s faces. There can be nothing sacred, neither the left nor the right.”

Dave Robbins, Tim’s brother, who composed the music in “Bob Roberts,” handled sound effects and scored the play, which includes singing commercials and a theme song for the talk show.

“It’s very ‘radiophonic’,” Loewenberg said. “Besides the terrific sound and music, there’s all sorts of satirical imagery where one idea or image or word is juxtaposed against another in a very clever way. There’s also a wonderful orchestra of voices, all kinds of different accents and characters who have a very distinct voice quality.”

“Mayhem” is based on a book entitled “Conquest of Paradise” by Kirkpatrick Sale.

“I was on vacation and was reading this book,” Robbins recalled. “I was in paradise--on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. It was the most ironic place to be reading this particular book. And when I got back to the States, the Gulf War was about to happen. So I started writing this play, and as I was writing it, I had the radio on and parts of the present started finding their way into the play.”

Robbins acknowledged that there has been a fair amount of Columbus-bashing this year, coinciding with today’s observance of the 500th anniversary of his famous voyage. But he thinks the scrutiny is healthy.

“Columbus isn’t faring too well this year,” Robbins said. “I’m sure there will be those who say that it’s bashing, who say, ‘Why be so negative?,’ ‘Why can’t we celebrate this day?’ . . . I don’t think it’s healthy to be so heavily into denial about what actually happened. I can’t see how that could possibly benefit anyone. Although it might be painful, the fact that so many people are looking anew at what essentially is a myth about Columbus ultimately has to be beneficial. We’re not going to get anywhere by closing our eyes and ignoring facts and ignoring different points of view.”

He hopes that because of plays like his, which challenge the notion of Columbus as the quintessential explorer, revisions can be made in school curriculum.

“Maybe after this, future teachers will be a little more reluctant to shove the myth down children’s throats in grade school,” he said.