And the Tony for pluck goes to ...

“Disneyfication,” waiting tables, obsessed fans ... and rats. Welcome to Broadway, where unrest brews, spectacle feeds the bottom line, onstage glitter hides backstage decay, and a Tony Award doesn’t guarantee employment -- or even an audition.

Break a leg, kid.

For their new book, “Making It on Broadway: Actors’ Tales of Climbing to the Top” (Allworth Press), co-authors David Wienir and Jodie Langel struck a nerve when they talked to 150 musical stage actors, more than a third of whom are Tony Award winners and nominees.

What was originally conceived as a light series of behind-the-scenes anecdotes became a forum for a remarkably candid outpouring of disillusionment, love, anger and pain.

“I think it just opened up the floodgates,” said Wienir, a New York entertainment lawyer. “So many of these interviews ended with all of us in tears.”

Langel, who stepped into the role as Cosette in the Broadway production of “Les Miserables” while still in college -- and found herself back in the ensemble eight years later -- was shocked to find that performers who had been her inspiration still struggled.

“It made me realize that no matter if you had done one Broadway show or had won three Tony Awards, all of these feelings are universal.”

There are stories of childhood dreams of fame, wardrobe and technical malfunctions, sudden amnesia, obsessed fans, tiny apartments infested with cockroaches (and ghosts), and the nightmare of arriving at the theater to find the show has closed. Elsewhere, the artists offer up painful experiences with sexual harassment, hazing and high jinks during shows and lack of respect from producers.

“This is the community coming together,” Wienir said. “It’s all kind of collectively saying, ‘Look, enough’s enough.’ We have to stop pretending that theater is the way it used to be in the ‘60s. We’re now in the new millennium, and there are some problems here that we need to squarely address.

“Very few people have said that this is a sad book or an angry book. If anything, what they’ve said is that it’s a real book.”

On always starting over:

“Once, I was out of a job and I was really scared because I couldn’t pay the rent.... I was cleaning the apartment, crying and feeling sorry for myself.... The game show ‘Jeopardy!’ was on [and] I heard my name. I looked up and I was the answer to a question. It was so ironic.” -- Donna McKechnie

On backstage squalor:

“The state of the theaters shocked me.... .I don’t understand it. If you go to the National Theater in Spain, you can literally eat off the floor. Here, the theaters are falling apart.... .It is like the star on a Christmas tree. It shines very much in front, but if you look in back, it is just paper.” -- Antonio Banderas

On corporatization:

“The star of the show is not the performer -- it’s the show. The star of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ is the chandelier. The star of ‘Les Miserables’ is the turntable. All of us in the show are just cogs in a wheel. The shows are going to run no matter what.” -- Ray Walker

On audiences:

“Nowadays, they even announce before the show, ‘Turn off your cellphones and pagers.’ Do people do it? No. And what is this whole ‘race for the door’ mentality after a show now? ...Would it kill you to stay for the curtain call? Do you know how offensive and humiliating it is to work for an audience who gives you their backs when you have to bow?” -- Jason Alexander

On making a living:

“This is my thirty-seventh year of working professionally. I am terrible lucky and grateful to be able to say that. But I wish it wasn’t still like it was when I was starting out -- hoping for the next audition, hoping to get the part, be offered enough money so I can pay the mortgage .... I find myself panting sometimes.” -- John Rubinstein

On keeping it real:

“I don’t see the camaraderie as much anymore. Everyone wants to be a soloist before really learning how to relate. When you can relate to the person next to you without words and be alive, when you can keep the energy and interest going, it is magical.” -- Chita Rivera