When Jenny Rogers (graduate-visual arts) visited Penn State as a prospective student last spring, her route took her past the Starlite Drive-In Theatre, which sits at 1100 Benner Pike, just past the Nittany Mall.

And, in this outdoor theater that often goes unnoticed, Rogers didn't just see a large plot of land, a dwarfing screen and a series of old white posts. She saw nostalgia and opportunity.

"For someone who is involved in painting and the visual arts, it was like a giant canvas. Just a huge, white canvas," Rogers said. "I thought, 'It would be amazing to work with that.'"

Now, nearly a year later, that same screen will finally be Rogers' own personal artistic vehicle, as she presents her live performance and film presentation "Trick Saddle" Monday through Thursday at the Starlite. The gates will open at 9 p.m. each night, with the show beginning at 9:30 p.m.

"Of course I want it to be beautiful, but I also want it to be entertaining," Rogers said. "I think when people view it, they're going to respond to it on many different levels."

The presentation -- which will consist of Rogers' film piece framed by the choreography of long-time friend Clove Galilee -- is the M.F.A. candidate's final project for Sallie McCorkle's installation art class. Rogers explains installation as the process of creating an environment using the arts, and she said it usually involves the incorporation of different kinds of media.

This particular installation is site-specific, which means the piece of art relates to the architecture or landscape of the location. In order to do this, Rogers is creating an old-time drive-in atmosphere by selling concessions, playing 30 minutes of music on the radio prior to the show and introducing her production with a 1950s movie trailer featuring vintage advertisements.

"In a way, it's kind of celebration of a space that's going to deteriorate -- that will no longer be there," Rogers said. "Drive-ins are a piece of Americana."

So, to take part in this piece of Americana, Rogers and Galilee have put in five weeks of organization and work, as well as an even longer period of thinking and conceptualizing. The two artistic partners, who met as undergraduate students at Brown University, have been talking for years about developing a presentation that incorporated cowgirls.

While the specifics were not clear, they had a name, "Trick Saddle," and an idea born out of old 8-mm cowboy films. While watching a Buck Jones movie from the early 1930s, Rogers and Galilee noticed that the movement of the cowboys in the film approximated modern dance. In addition, the two women, who have collaborated on various projects over the past 12 years, also became interested in the slow motion fight scenes of the film.

"They'll have these moments when someone gets shot, and it gets very slow," Rogers said. "So with these slow movements, it looks like they're actually immersed in water.

"We started thinking about that slow motion movement. What if we actually immersed cowboys in water?"

And that's exactly what Rogers -- who is the university's first graduate fellow in the visual arts -- did. With the cooperation of six members of the Penn State synchronized swimming team and the McCoy Natatorium staff, she was able to produce a digital film that realized her vision of underwater cowgirls. Dressed in full costume, including chaps and hats, Galilee and the other participants take part in choreographed movements and fight scenes to the accompaniment of music.

"I never swam in that many clothes before, and it was definitely weird at first," said synchronized swimming team member Julie Stipanovic (junior-secondary education). "But we thought we'd give it a try. We wanted to help them out."

While this was taking place, Galilee -- who is a professional choreographer and dancer based in New York -- was coordinating the live dance performance. After recruiting 20 dancers through the undergraduate theatre program and the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre company, Galilee held a two-week workshop to acquaint the participants with contact improvisation and other unfamiliar movement techniques. After that, the group got into the actual choreography, working about two hours each night.

"It's been a wonderful experience. The women involved are just phenomenal," said Galilee, who traveled to and from New York, where she has been rehearsing a play throughout the five-week period.

"It was really refreshing to work with people who were very open to a creative process that they didn't really know much about before it started."

And, while the creative process may appear to be culminating with this week's presentation, Rogers and Galilee are not even close to being finished.

The Starlite installation will feature only a 10-minute version of the 30-minute film because of the expenses of transferring it from digital video to 35-mm film. By next winter, when Rogers will present the project as her thesis show at Performance Space 122 in New York, she hopes to expand the entire presentation.

She wants to add some more diverse dancers and swimmers, as well as incorporate documentation footage from the drive-in piece.

This, she said, is part of an attempt to bring a rural, old-fashioned American landmark into the heart of Manhattan.

"There's something exotic about the rural in the big city," Rogers said.

And, although she's concentrating on developing her thesis show right now, Rogers said she and Galilee would eventually like to take the project back to the site of inspiration.

They're hoping to crisscross the country, bringing the installation to different drive-ins and using a combination of their own dancers and community members in the live performance.

For Rogers, it's a way to get her art, and its message, out to the public.

And it's also a way to hold on to the drive-in, giving the artist a chance to restore life into these forgotten landmarks -- a way to connect her audience with a setting that was powerful enough to command her creation.