This is the easiest class i've ever taken in UCLA. Not only is it easy, it is also interesting. During the summer, we have two lectures per week, accompanied by readings and screenings. All of the material are super interesting and you learn a lot about theater and different plays. Our grade consists of weekly quizzes, midterm paper, and final paper. The paper topics are flexible too, and it's really nice to choose which one you like the most. Grading is mostly lenient, and I highly recommend this class!

Professor Gorschein is awesome. The class is online anyway so there wasn't much change to his plan. I found a newfound appreciation for live theatre through his class and once things get back to normal I would really like to attend live performances. There was weekly homework based on the readings and a midterm paper and final. This was all simple and graded leniently.

This is a great and easy GE. I am a STEM major and not at all into acting lol! The only acting you actually have to do is a short video for extra credit (so it's completely optional). The readings and videos are interesting and pretty light in workload. The essays are graded fairly easy and it isn't hard to succeed in this class.

This class is the best move

Didn't really learn that much but it was an easy A. Lectures were just him talking about theater and the readings were a bit long, but you don't have to read it if you didn't want to.

TAKE THIS GE!!!

Cannot stress enough how easy and flexible this class was especially when I combined it with two other summer courses (major reqs) and working a part-time job. Dr. Gorshein basically has everything laid out in the syllabus and there are routine discussion posts and quizzes each week relating to the screenings, reading and lecture. There is one essay in this class (~1000-1200 words) but you can write about anything theater-related and Dr. Gorshein is very helpful through the process. I ended up writing about Japanese theater and he gave me lots of resources to support my thesis. **also!! there are three different paper deadlines to choose from, all spaced two weeks from each other so you get to choose when you want to do it by. I chose the earliest just to get it out of the way**
I really liked how quick the TA and professor would respond to emails and the quick feedback we'd get for our quiz, discussion, and essay scores. I have no regrets with this class and highly recommend. It was so relaxing and I actually did enjoy learning about theater with Dr. Gorshein.

Professor Gorshein is a wonderful professor, very concerned with student understanding, very clear with expectations, and very approachable. The only downside is that his lectures for this class were a little all over the place, but it did not make a huge difference. He somehow manages to conduct questions in a lecture hall, and encourage student participation. I was able to approach him before class with questions about tests, and tell him about lectures I would miss and how to make them up, and he was very understanding. Very good class, if the lecture was long sometimes.

Taking musical theatre history with Professor Gorshein is much like attending a musical: you feel as if you are transported into a whole different realm filled with delightful songs and dance, educational history, and valuable lessons. During every lecture, I found myself travelling back in history to witness the first show boat or on stage singing alongside Dorothy from The Wiz! or dancing with anxious auditionees from The Chorus Line and returning from my adventure with Hamilton stuck in my head -- completely forgetting how I was actually stuck in a miserable little dorm room in the middle of an awful pandemic.

The course covers a variety of musical theatre-related topics and shows in a diverse set of historical contexts. I was absolutely astounded by how much history and interesting information was examined in such a brief 6 weeks! The weekly quizzes are fair and help reinforce both lecture material and assigned readings, which are provided on the course website and neatly organised by week. I really enjoyed the weekly discussion forum posts, where I had the opportunity to both become enlightened by my fellow classmates' diverse perspectives and share a bit of my own insights. Even if you aren't a theatre major or minor, consider taking this course; plenty of my classmates came from south campus and had just as many eye-opening contributions as my fellow performers!

Professor Gorshein truly brings to life such wonderfully intriguing material in the most engaging and effective way. I would certainly recommend this course to anyone who has a passion for history, the performing arts, learning - or all the above!