Collective Unconscious?

Interesting that in the past month, I've read two articles in the New York Times about new works of theater that use the Eurydice and Persephone myths.

The first is Sarah Ruhl's new play Eurydice, currently playing at the Second Stage Theater in New York City. It's apparently about Eurydice's experience in the underworld, and creates a central relationship between Eurydice and her father. I find that particularly interesting, as I have not been able to find any back story about Eurydice's family or lineage. In some versions of the myth she is called a nymph but in others they don't even say if she's mortal or not. Maybe I should email the playwright and ask her if she found any research into her family, or if she invented the entire relationship. I have chosen to leave my Eurydice's family life deliberately ambiguous.

The second work is Jake Heggie's opera To Hell and Back, in which Patti Lupone was recently performing. The New York Times describes it thus: "Reframing the Persephone myth as a contemporary tale of domestic abuse, [Heggie and Scheer] had conceived the 38-minute operatic piece with Ms. LuPone specifically in mind to sing the role of the battered wife’s mother-in-law."

My dad says the Collective Unconscious explains the rise of these themes all in seemingly unrelated places by unconnected people. I wonder if it isn't the same phenomenon that occurred when I named my daughter a very unusual name and then started noticing it everywhere. Was it always there, or was I unwittingly part of a trend about which I was previously unaware...?