Not to harp on this too much, but, you never know what you might find yourself interested in, and neither does the university, which is why they make you take so much. Their goal is to make you a more rounded individual, not churn out robots good in one field of choice, again, that's what vocational schools are for. Theatrical schools know this too and if you had gone to one of those, you would have had to take physics, math, history etc there too, because they know the importance of a well rounded education. You don't have to take the super hard sciences but you get the basic grounding, knowing more about the world we live in is never a bad thing.
I was a Visual Arts major, with a focus in drawing and painting. Because of the college I went to my undergrad requirements had me take five humanities courses, three chemistry courses, one biology course, one physics course (from an astronaut!), I took five calculus courses (no, not the same one five times), a statistics course, an anthropology course to satisfy the history requirement as well as an african studies course, plus some stuff I can't even remember anymore, plus the courses I took for my minor.
I went to a UC so it's technically a public university. I loved that anthropology course so much I thought about switching majors at one point, but it would have required doing more of the other sciences that I wasn't really into so, I decided against it, point is, you never know what you might find on the course list and those requirements force you to take stuff you might not take if it was just an elective.
I can't even remember if the PE course I took was required or not, it was weight training BTW. I also took gospel choir but that wasn't a requirement, that was just to meet girls... plus it was a fun class.
