Despite the news clips you may have seen of Grinch-craving tykes weeping on 42nd Street, the New York theater world has plenty to offer with or without Broadway. The 19-day stagehands’ strike reportedly benefited a handful of off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows (including such worthy offerings as “Gone Missing,” “The Receptionist,” and “Altar Boyz”), but in general, these companies are used to living in the shadow of their glitzier, pricier, tourist-luring cohort.

As with any art form with low barriers of entry, their efforts vary widely from dreary to extraordinary. (Not that Broadway is immune to this variance.) And while they are accustomed to existing outside the gaze of most mainstream media outlets — they survive primarily on word of mouth, a few well-connected Web sites, and one or two omnivorous New Yorkcentric newsweeklies — the return of Broadway ought not steal the focus entirely from the many, many other offerings opening this month:

Aficionados of the 1980s school of imported pop operas, à la “Les Miserables,” can revisit a stormier chapter in that genre’s history — the controversy over Jonathan Pryce being cast as a half-Asian pimp in “Miss Saigon” — in “Yellow Face,” opening December 10 at the Public. It’s by David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”), who played an instrumental role in the ensuing protests.

If the dancing, singing fauna of “The Lion King” is more your speed, Dysfunctional Theatre gets into the anthropomorphic (and holiday) spirit with “The Eight: Reindeer Monologues” (at the Red Room through December 21). Julie Taymor’s comrade in masterful puppetry, Peter Schumann — his work is a heavy influence on one sequence in Ms. Taymor’s “Across the Universe” — has brought his sprawling Bread and Puppet company down from Vermont for its annual stint at Theatre for the New City; two takes on the Divine Comedy, one for the whole family and one less so, are already in full swing. There’s also “Runt of the Litter” (December 9 at 37 Arts), a well-traveled solo show by former NFL defensive back Bo Eason.

If your tastes run toward the classics, take your pick among Shaw (“The Devil’s Disciple,” opening December 13 at Irish Rep), Christopher Marlowe (the appropriately named Red Bull Theatre’s “Edward the Second,” opening December 11 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre), and Langston Hughes (“Black Nativity,” a trip downtown by Classical Theatre of Harlem that opened this weekend at the Duke on 42nd Street).

Beckett gets the red-carpet treatment at New York Theatre Workshop, with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Philip Glass, and director JoAnne Akalaitis tackling four of his shorter works (December 16). And Brecht buffs can choose between “Man Is Man” (December 10 at HERE), directed by the Dutch “real-time theatre” pioneer Paul Binnerts, and “Uncivil Wars,” a dance-theatre adaptation of “The Roundheads and the Pointheads” by Village Voice critic Michael Feingold (December 13 at the Kitchen).

59E59 Theaters continues to supply a wide variety of fare; this month’s offerings include “The City That Cried Wolf” (opening Wednesday), a noir riff on “Mother Goose,” and “Cut to the Chase” (December 12), by the vaudeville troupe Parallel Exit. A more adventurous roster can be found at P.S. 122, starting December 12 with a pair of shows by the Chicago-based troupe 500 Clown (a Christmas show and yet another “Frankenstein” retelling) and concluding December 23 with the London import “C’est Duckie!,” a risqué cabaret with audience interaction.

The Atlantic and Manhattan Theatre Club, two of the larger off-Broadway houses, each have new works on tap. MTC goes first with Abbie Spallen’s Irish drama “Pumpgirl,” about a fateful love triangle at a provincial petrol station. “Pumpgirl” opens Tuesday, the day before the Atlantic unveils Peter Parnell’s “Trumpery,” about the competition Charles Darwin faced in publishing his theory. And the exemplary Soho Rep, which officially became an off-Broadway theater earlier this year, goes big with “No Dice” (opening Saturday), the Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s four-hour “epic of the everyday” and homage to amateur dinner theater. Playwrights Horizons’ time-hopping “Doris to Darlene, A Cautionary Valentine” (December 11), by the up-and-coming playwright Jordan Harrison, features two songs by the acclaimed Kirsten Childs. Its title notwithstanding, “Queens Boulevard (the musical)” (opening tonight), the second entry in the Signature Theatre’s Charles Mee season, also straddles the boundary between full-fledged musicals and the growing category of plays with music. And there’s nothing unequivocal about the absurdly prolific Al Carmines, one of the true legends of off-off-Broadway; his oratorio “Christmas Wrappings” returns Wednesday to Judson Memorial Church, where it played for 14 straight years in the 1970s and early ’80s.